Turnabout Ghosts
by BlueSun13
Summary: Three memories that the Yatagarasu cannot escape.
1. Chapter 1

**Turnabout Ghosts**  
By Bluesun13

Disclaimer: The Ace Attorney Series, its characters and other copyrighted material do not belong to me.

Three memories that the Yatagarasu cannot escape.

* * *

He'd been a fool. They both had. In this moment, it was one thing that Detective Tyrell Badd was perfectly clear on. The notion came swift, blade-like, and it pierced right through every other thought that had been churning about in his mind.

He held his position, eyes fixed on the small hand-mirror in front of him. He could see everything going on behind him that way—in particular, the gathering cloud of uniformed officers less than three feet from where he stood. Every one of them was staring frontward, eyes and weapons trained on the looming stone structure that comprised the corporate offices of The Webspynner Company.

_Yew was going to kill him._

The thought flickered through his mind. She was going to kill both of them-that was, if Byrne made it out of this one alive. 

They were getting careless. This night in particular, they'd strayed too far from the line. Nothing had been planned. It had all come at the very last minute. They hadn't even consulted with Yew. There hadn't been time. Byrne had received some troubling information that he'd deemed too urgent to "just sit on." They had to act tonight, he'd insisted. Tyrell could still picture him, face flushed, bursting into his office. _It had to be tonight._

But, something had gone amiss. Someone had spotted the Great Thief the Yatagarasu...and now here they were: Detective Tyrell Badd, whose reputation preceded him always-as one driven to capture the thief at any cost-and a firing squad.

_Byrne, be careful._

He'd said it as many times as he'd thought it. There'd been the feeling, his gut, his Detective's instinct. _Why had he ignored it?_

The Yatagarasu...

Not one man.  
Not one being.  
But, three.  
And yet

a single identity.

He began to wonder then, just what might happen if you killed one third of a person. Was it possible for the rest to go on? Certainly, if something happened to Byrne, it would be the end of the Yatagarasu. The Great Thief and all mystery surrounding him was a combination of not only the efforts, but the talents and resources of three individual people: the prosecutor, the detective, the defense attorney. Thus, the Yatagarasu always knew the location of its target, always knew the ins and outs of its defenses, and most importantly never _ever_ left a single shred of evidence behind.

Two hours had passed and nothing had stirred within the Webspynner building. Detective Badd could delay no longer; he would have to send his men in after the thief. He barked orders over the roar of blood rush in his ears and the countdown rhythm of his own heartbeat.

Another two hours would follow in eerie almost silence.

There would be no possibility of getting a message to Yew. He was being watched, now. Not just by his men, but by the news cameras as well. From the moment since he'd received notification that Byrne-that the Yatagarasu had been spotted, he had not been alone.

But surely, by now, she knew. He could almost feel her watching through the screen of a television set somewhere. Could almost hear the venom in her voice. _You idiot...  
_

She hated him, that much he knew. She was vengeful and unforgiving—more so than anyone he'd ever known. She'd once told him, outright, that his greatest flaw was his carelessness. While his pride sputtered beneath a stone surface, she added this caveat: Byrne's flaw, she said, was that he was too trusting. Of the two, she'd warned icily, his partner's was the greater offense.

Indeed, she had forgiven neither of them, whether for their flaws or the escape of her sister's killer. Sometimes, the answer was perilously unclear. Even so, the three shared an odd bond. Should something happen to either of them-that would also go unforgiven. The blame, of course, would rest on the surviving party.

Byrne was softer toward her; perhaps because he was so clearly in love with her. It was a fight Tyrell had never been willing to enter into with his partner. In the end, he could never be certain that he was more concerned for his friend than he was in competition for her affection. It was not love, he reasoned. It was unity. Passion. The shared secret that burned brighter than any candle he'd ever held to anyone. Until this, Tyrell's only passion had been his job. There had been no time for love or a family.

In hindsight, he would have loved to have had a daughter-perhaps one like Kay. Wide eyed and exuberant. At the very least, he would always be 'Uncle Badd'.

In his mind he could hear Yew laughing at him. There was a barely detectable difference in the way she laughed when she was mocking someone (it seemed a favorite pastime of hers) and the way she did when something had gotten to her. He wondered if anyone else, even Byrne, noticed. It seemed the only indication she'd allow, that anything affected her at all.  
No, that wasn't true.

There was the scream.

The single, terrible, piercing scream that she'd let out when Manny Coachen-her sister's killer-had gone free.

The sound had gone straight into him-cutting through years of hardened exterior. It had coiled around the memory of that trial like a snake; the precise moment when the decision was handed down, that scream, and the look he'd shared with Byrne then. They had shared a revelation: _there were limits to what the law could do.  
_  
And if something happened to Byrne tonight, he wondered if she'd...

"I came as soon as I heard..."

The man's voice was almost out of place, though it very much should have belonged. To the newsmen, anyway, nothing would have appeared amiss. And even with his mirror-which, he'd nearly dropped-Tyrell Badd had somehow failed to notice his friend's approach.

"Faraday!"

"Why do you look surprised?" Byrne spoke through the gritted teeth of a beaming smile. It was, as much a reprimand as a joke.

The Great Thief...

"So, tell me Detective, have your men found anything of the Yatagarasu?"

Byrne's tone was businesslike, but it retained it's usual almost awkward charisma. Tyrell was torn between pulling the man before him into a rough hug and strangling him with that damned ascot he always insisted on wearing.

He settled on a smile, the relief finally having a chance to set in. 

"It seems to have been nothing more than a scare, Mr. Prosecutor."

"Are you sure he hasn't just managed to evade you again, Detective?"

"It's possible; he is a slippery bastard. One of these days, though..."

The next part was mumbled, so as to avoid the looming news crew, still largely uninterested in the appearance of Prosecutor Faraday. "_...I'm going to beat the ever living shit out of him."_

Byrne grinned widely. A Cheshire cat, straight from a children's story. Though, as he recalled, it was a much darker tale than expected.

"We'll see." Was all he said.

And Tyrell wondered, for the umpteenth time, what he would do if anything ever happened to his friend.


	2. Chapter 2

2

The orders had been handed down; there was little she could do about it.

Little she would. Whatever Calisto Yew, herself, might have done—She was not in the business of sacrificing her life for others. Fondness would not change that.

The card had said all it needed to, but it had implied much more. They believed that she was becoming too comfortable in this role. It was more than just an instruction; it was a question posed directly to her. _To whom does your loyalty truly belong?_

Childish jealousy—when she really thought about it. But, even a child would be aware of the choices laid before her in such cases. More often than not, you ran with the pack.

It was not a pleasant assignment. 

She recalled, clearly, the first time they'd met—that she had met Byrne Faraday and Tyrell Badd and _they_ had met Ms. Yew.

She reminded herself again, this was not who she was.

Even so,

it would have been impossible to make them believe in Calisto if some part or parts of her had not been real. Those parts had to be chosen with great care. They were meant to convince the men, and not only to convince but to endear, to buy their trust.

She had sold the very last pieces of her soul doing just that.

The scream had not been rehearsed; only repeated.  
It had been taken with great care from one isolated moment in time, a memory that burned to the touch, and placed into a new context. There, it scalded and marked her all over again—branded a new loss. This one, at least, had been imaginary. 

She did not dwell on the memory. Instead, she focused on Calisto's memory of her sister. Another girl, another time, another tragedy that did not belong to her. When she shed this skin, that loss would no longer be with her. It was for Calisto to mourn.

Now, there was this.

Byrne and Tyrell, she reminded herself, also belonged to Calisto Yew. Those memories, that bond, it had been destined to come to this. She was to betray them from the start. There had never been anything else. Whatever Calisto's intentions; hers had been clear. The orders had come with that first card. With this last one, she had completed her hand. It was time to show what had been dealt to her—to all of them—the Yatagarasu.

Byrne Faraday, the King of Hearts: _off with his head._

  
Years of being what she was; she had long ago learned to deal with these things. She had her manner of preparation, of storing away the parts of herself that might object. She had her hatred and her trigger and her release.

In the days that followed, she would do exactly as she had been told.  
She would plan.  
She would betray Tyrell Badd.  
She would betray and kill Byrne Faraday.  
She would destroy the Yatagarasu—and perhaps, also punish the Thief.

But, in the first few moments after having received her orders, she locked the door leading into Calisto Yew's apartment. She closed every window, in every room and after checking every lock twice; s_he screamed and screamed._


	3. Chapter 3

3

"Kay,"

Miles Edgeworth looked her straight in the eyes.

"_You _are the very imprint that your father has made upon this world. I cannot imagine anything which would have made him more proud."

She did not want to cry, but she did. She cried because she missed him and it made her sad. She cried because she thought the world of Miles Edgeworth, and those words and to have them coming from him, meant everything.

"It's true." Ms. Von Karma added, never to be outdone by her brother. "You should be proud of your strong heritage and the nobility that has been passed on to you."

_Why could no one else seem to see that Ms. Von Karma was so nice? _It remained, to Kay, utterly mysterious, even as Gummie received a lick of her whip.

_"Say something, Scruffy!"_

"YEOWCH! Ye-Yes Sir!..."

"What are you waiting for?"

"Kay, Pal, you're...we're really proud of you. All of us."

**"I am the Great Thief, the Yatagarasu..."**

That was how the journal entry had begun. She had not shared it with anyone. As far as she knew, the only other person who had ever read those words had been Byrne Faraday, her father, the man who wrote them. From this, she had taken the idea, had begun to shape a new destiny for herself. She would inherit the title, she would become the next noble thief. The legend of the Yatagarasu would live on...

It would have changed little if she had read further on. In all his writings, he never once mentioned their names: Uncle Bad, that woman...Her father had died before he had realized the truth about Calisto Yew.

If she had read on, she would have only learned sooner what she had already come to realize, thanks to Mr. Edgeworth, Ms. Von Karma and Gummie.

**"...the Yatagarasu is never alone."**

Byrne Faraday was not the Yatagarasu—not entirely. He was only one piece of that entity. As Uncle Badd had put it, "the heart."

Like all beings, the Yatagarasu was not entirely good or altruistic. There were elements of cruelty and betrayal. That woman...

For all she wanted to honor her father, Kay could never accept the part of the Yatagarasu that had been Calisto Yew, the defense attorney, the spy.

With her father dead, Uncle Badd in prison, and that woman gone away somewhere—hopefully to face her crimes, the Yatagarasu had been dissolved.

What was left, then?

What echo of her father remained?

And that moment, the one in which the Yatagarasu had become no more, the moment when she had glanced at Mr. Edgeworth...a thought occurred to her.

"Mr. Edgeworth..."

"Yes, Kay?"

"May I see that funny looking toy you always carry around in your pocket."

With a grunt of disapproval and an immediate explanation of the object's true nature—Kay ignored this—he handed her his Prosecutor's badge.

"My father had one...just like this..." She said, absently fingering the pin. If she thought about it, Kay was fairly certain she knew exactly where the badge was still kept, in a small locked box of her father's few prized possessions—the ones that had been kept after he'd died. 

"I am _not_ the Great Thief Yatagarasu," she said then, receiving a startled look from the rest.

Mr. Edgeworth in particular, seem to be eying her with suspicious relief.

"I am not the successor to anything that woman was a part of." She added resolutely.

"I am the successor to the Great Prosecutor Faraday!"

_Prosecutor Faraday—the part of the Great thief that had been her father, the man he'd been before it all went down._

He was beaming at her, Mr. Edgeworth and, somewhere-she could feel it, her father. 

"...And Miles Edgeworth is going to be my mentor!"


End file.
